Our Eyes Closed
by snappleducated
Summary: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy.
1. Western

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**SETTING**: What the hell is going on?  
**GENRE**: Western  
**DISCLAIMER**: I actually don't know.  
**NOTES**: So my friends just came in and were like, "Let's go partaaaay!" and I was like "SHUT UP I HAVE TO WRITE FANFICTION!" and then I realized that my friends have it rough.  
**LENGTH**: 1/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, first: western.

* * *

One time, Natsume gets really, really sick. Fever-sick, delusional sick, and for some reason, she realizes that Sasayan is a cowboy, a real straight shooter, and she is a saloon girl with a slit up her skirt and garters with ruffles. It's a real cute outfit. She adds some sequins.

At one point, she gets kidnaped and he has to save her. The guy who kidnaps her is bad news, all decked out in silver stars, the trophies of the sheriffs he's killed. A little part of Natsume knows that Mitty would turn up her nose at this fantasy, say something like, "Natsume, don't be such a damsel in distress. There are guns in this fantasy, all you have to do is point and shoot. Save yourself! You think that shorty's gonna cut it?"

Shizuku is the shotgun-happy saloon/inn owner. She has a wig that's a pile of curls and viciously red lipstick. She drinks compulsively. It has no effect. Everyone in town owes her money and favors, including her father. As an afterthought, Natsume adds garters to Shizuku's outfit too. You can't see them, but what the hell. She makes them a little extra racy, a special little secret.

Haru is basically the same, with a cool hat. He's a natural.

Natsume isn't too sure why she gets kidnapped. Maybe she's getting forced into marriage? She imagines her parents are cripplingly in debt, and Natsume must bravely offer herself over as compensation. She imagines she is very good at self-sacrifice.

"What are you talking about," mind-Mitty snaps. "Are you a prostitute or cattle?"

Natsume edits herself: the baddy is a pervert with a complex. He regularly ties women to train tracks to satisfy his troubled mind. So, there she is. On the train tracks. Sasayan the deputy-deputy turns up to save her. He's too short to be the real deputy. Shizuku is right: he is basically useless. Natsume is saved by a bullet that has travelled five miraculous miles, straight from Shizuku's double-barreled gun. She's a _really_ good shot.

"Do you want a lift or something?" Sasayan the deputy-deputy asks. He lifts her onto the horse, sideways style, and together, they ride off into the sunset. Or maybe just back to town.

Natsume rolls over, and drools onto her pillow. She mumbles. She isn't sure what happens next.


	2. Adventure

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Adventure  
**DISCLAIMER**: Stop picking on me!  
**NOTES**: So I've decided to make these drabbles part of a continuous plot. This means that they're not all going to be as out-there as the first one. Sometimes they'll be more…genre _influenced_, rather than a faithful interpretation. This chapter is a pretty good example.  
**LENGTH**: 2/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, second: adventure.

* * *

Natsume woke up. It was a state of complete alertness, an immediate transition from sleep to wakefulness that can be brought about by only the most traumatic of emotional experiences.

She spent several minutes staring at ceiling with an expression of extreme discontentment.

Her alarm went off.

"Be silent," Natsume hissed, in her evilest voice. And then she punched it. Her final accomplishment was knocking her alarm clock off her bedside table and into a position where she could no longer reach it without getting up. Natsume pounded her heels angrily against her mattress.

"ASAKO," her mother yelled, after the alarm had been blaring for a solid five minutes. Natsume sulkily rose to shut off the noise, and considered her mother's many villainous traits. Too bad her mom hadn't been in the cowboy dream with—

Natsume screwed up her face. She marched into the kitchen.

"I can't go to school. I'm sick."

Her mother looked up from the newspaper. The expression in her eyes was incredible. "You're fine. I can tell. I'm your mother."

"FINE," Natsume wailed, and went back into her room.

As she dressed, she considered first the many ways in which the universe had failed her, and then how she was supposed to get to school without running into Sasayan. It would be tricky. There was about a ten-block overlap in their shared commutes, and those ten blocks fell in a perfect straight line.

Plus, he had a bike.

But it wasn't like she could look at him right now! Not after she'd dreamed about them _riding off into the sunset together_. Fever or not, that was just inexcusable. Wondering if he really would look that cute in a cowboy hat was EVEN WORSE, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER?

Natsume reached for the ugliest hat she owned. It would not do to venture into hostile territory without a proper disguise.

"Nice hat," her father noted as she re-entered the kitchen. "It looks cute on you."

"Thank you," Natsume replied, with what she thought was a good deal of valiance, "I'm wearing it to protect myself from contracting further illness, since mom is forcing me to go to school _despite_ my ailing condition—"

"You are ridiculous," her mother said, utterly unmoved. Natsume fumed and stomped around for a while and ultimately began marching to school.

There were many obstacles.

Endless possibilities of enemy encounters.

Natsume walked quickly, checking over her shoulder every now and then, and peering nervously around the corners to alleys and side streets she had, admittedly, never seen Sasayan ride down. Her quest repeated insistently through her mind: get to the school undetected.

"Natsume!"

Oh no.

"Hey, you feeling better?"

Natsume peeked over her shoulder. There was maybe half a block between them. He'd managed to cleverly disguise himself by walking behind some of his taller teammates. The scoundrel.

"I, uh—" Natsume stammered. Her face burned. She turned slowly away from him, and bolted.

"Natsume!"

"No!" she yelled back, still tearing down the street.

"What are you doing?"

His voice did not seem to be getting further away. Natsume looked behind her and squeaked.

"Why are you running?" Sasayan asked, now right behind her as he'd hopped on his bike, "Are we late?"

"No!"

"Do you want a lift or something?" he asked, and she remembered that this was exactly what he had said in her dream. She gasped.

"Stop chasing me!"

"We're going to the same place!" he said indignantly. Natsume spluttered. She floundered. She paused to stamp her foot. She took a deep breath.

"I feel like walking," she said, in what she decided was an extremely normal and not-suspicious tone of voice.

"Oh, I get it," he said, and then jumped off to walk along beside her. Natsume shot him an extremely suspicious look, certain that he had misinterpreted her on purpose. Sasayan whistled.


	3. Tragedy

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Tragedy  
**DISCLAIMER**: I do not make money doing this. Expect nothing.  
**NOTES**: Greetings. I've decided: updates will be every other day, henceforth. I will probably break this rule at some point, but! That's that goal!  
**LENGTH**: 3/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, third: tragedy.

* * *

After her unfortunate capture into enemy hands, Natsume resigned herself to share the trek up to school with fairly good grace. So long as she avoided looking at his head, she found that she could maintain a fairly neutral stasis. And that was good. Neutral stasis was good. Sasayan's elbows, for example, did not seem to provoke her strange blushing fit into resurgence. They were just elbows. A little beat-up and scarred, sure, and one of them had a stupid star-patterned Band-Aid on it, but it wasn't like she looked at them and recognized them as Sasayan's elbows and—well, okay, actually she _could_ recognize them but—oh, shoot.

Natsume ducked her head, face flaming up again.

"Oh, hey, I meant to ask you," Sasayan piped up as they were passing through the school gates, "Did you get the homework? I know math isn't really your thing, and it took me _ages_, so—"

Natsume stopped dead, eyes wide and afraid. Sasayan stopped too.

"I forgot!" she wailed in a tiny voice. His eyebrows shot up.

"You left it at home?"

"No! I didn't do it at all!" she threw her hands over her face, "There's a test on it today, isn't there?"

He was already digging his own homework out of his bag, "Here, you can look at mine."

She seized the papers from his hands and bent over them, finally concluding, "I don't understand any of this!"

Sasayan sighed, "Natsume, come on."

"I was busy! I just forgot!" she defended. He didn't have to know she'd spent the evening on her PlayStation, valiantly campaigning for Satoshi's heart in her new favorite game, _Baby, It's Us in the STARS._

Judging by the look he was shooting her, Natsume thought Sasayan had a pretty good idea what had happened. Normally, she would have bristled against his judgment. Now, she could only look at him through teary eyes and whimper, "Help me."

When all he did to help her was look exasperated, Natsume was forced to concede that this Sasayan was probably not as valiant as the one in her dreams. She shuffled after him to the bike racks, working very hard on looking pitiful.

In the end he did his best to summarize all the formulas she needed to know, and Natsume nodded eagerly at every pause in his instruction. She was feeling reasonably confident as she sat down to take her math test that morning, and lifted her pencil with purpose. She read through the first question, and then scanned down the sheet. Her heart sank. Everything was a mystery.

Natsume put her head down on the table, and tried not to cry.

Then she surged back up. Okay. If she didn't know any of the answers, she would just have to—

Natsume ducked her head so that her hair hung in front of her face, and sneakily tried to look over at her neighbor's paper. Her neighbor—who, Natsume now remembered, was after one of the guys who'd asked Natsume out on a date last week—shot her an extremely unfriendly look, and raised her elbow. Natsume wanted to scream at her, "IT ISN'T LIKE YOUR STUPID ANSWERS ARE EVEN RIGHT ANYWAYS!" but settled for peering one desk over. She had very good vision. Across the classroom, Sasayan was shaking his head at her.

Two desks over, Aoi-san was drawing dolphins in all of her answer boxes. Natsume was impressed. The shading was quite beautiful.

She slammed her head back down, hissing silently. Didn't _anyone_ study anymore?! What was the world coming to?!

"Natsume-san, do you need to go to the nurse?" her teacher droned from the front of the room. Natsume jerked back into an upright position.

"N-No!"

Sasayan had put his hands over his face. His shoulders quivered slightly.

Natsume looked back down at her test paper. Her lip quivered slightly. She regretted not writing down the formulas Sasayan had taught her on her thighs so her skirt would hide them. Even if her teacher did catch her, how could he reasonably ask her to lift up her skirt so he could check?

Natsume's eyes grew hot and wet. She blinked rapidly. It was all over. She was going to fail. Maybe this would be the test that tipped the scales. Maybe she would have to repeat a year, and be the only one left behind while Haru, Mitty and Sasayan went off to their glamorous college lives.

Natsume sniffed.

She felt incredibly sorry for herself.


	4. Angst

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Angst  
**DISCLAIMER**: God, I am so poor.  
**NOTES**: Screw it, I can't be expected to keep a deadline while I'm on holiday! I hope you have had very pleasant breaks and spent some time with your family, or successfully evaded them, depending on your preference.  
**LENGTH**: 4/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, fourth: angst

* * *

"Do you think I could be a model?"

"You're too short," Sasayan said. Natsume sneered at him, in a way which she hoped conveyed how little weight such a statement carried when delivered by him. "Do you _want_ to be a model?" he asked after a second of consideration, and even stretched himself to add, "You could do magazine stuff maybe, or face-work."

"Tch," Natsume glowered at him. How incredibly unfair! What was the _point_ in being so cute if she couldn't get a single good thing out of it!

Still harboring these sentiments, she nibbled on the corner of one of Sasayan's rice balls. It was floppy, too loosely packed, and crumbled as she held it. "Fine," she growled, "I didn't really want to be one anyways."

"I changed my mind, I bet you could if you tried."

"I just said I didn't want to!" Natsume cried. Sasayan rolled his eyes.

She dropped back down from the swell of her anger, eyes on the ground, "I just thought, well, I'm so stupid, so I probably won't get into university, so—"

"Oh, Natsume, come on," Sasayan sighed, "You'll be fine."

"I _failed_ that test."

"I think half the class failed that test. Over ninety-five percent of us are still going to graduate, according to the national average."

Natsume looked away bitterly. She felt deep in her bones that there was something different about failing a test because of poor study habits, and failing because of simple ineptitude.

"You don't understand," she said, and stared broodingly out the window. Across the desk, Sasayan leaned back from her, his eyebrows up. He looked at her the same way he might look at an old comedy duo that had been repeating the same joke for the last ten years.

"Don't you think you're over-reacting a little?" he said at last, "Look, I'm sorry that you're feeling down about this, but it's just _one test_, and it's not a big one, and you aren't _really_ in danger of anything, so—"

Watching him talk, she wondered if this was what all normal people were like, and if she could ever learn to be like that.

Instead, all she said was, "I don't know what to do," and stuffed the rest of his rice ball into her mouth. She looked down so she wouldn't have to meet his eyes. She wondered if he found her pitiful, or ridiculous, or exasperating. It always seemed to be one of those three. For someone who claimed to like her, she thought he had an awfully negative impression.

She could feel the silence around them, and at the point when it was poised to break open again, she left.


	5. Suspense

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Suspense  
**DISCLAIMER**: I guffaw, scornfully.  
**NOTES**: I'm back at college! My dramatically reduced level of free time can only result in me updating more. I work in mysterious ways.  
**LENGTH**: 5/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, fifth: suspense

* * *

Natsume was about halfway down the hall and in the dead center of her dramatic exit when she had a realization: there were multiple methods of cheating. She turned on the spot and hastened back to Sasayan's desk. He did not have the grace to look surprised by her change of heart. Nor did he go to any sort of effort to display what she felt was an appropriate amount of excitement and/or appreciation for her brilliant plan.

"You are incredibly unethical," Sasayan noted, as she told him about her breakthrough. Natsume scowled.

"People cheat all the time!"

"Natsume. You failed the test. Let it go."

"IT ISN'T MY FAULT I SIT NEXT TO IDIOTS AND SELFISH BRAINIACS!" she squawked at him, and then hastily lowered her voice in case a teacher was passing by the classroom. Sasayan sighed. A couple of the boys he had been sitting with who'd scattered at Natsume's approach were beginning to circle back towards their friend's desk. Natsume glared at them, and they sharnk away. Just as well! She'd barely been gone for two minutes and he'd been filling her place! The nerve.

"I need your help acting as the distraction," she hissed to Sasayan, and began drawing on the backside of his homework. "Listen, the points of entry are here, here, and—"

"Absolutely not," Sasayan grumped. Natsume was astonished. Her pleas for aid, blatantly ignored! Worst suitor _ever_. Cowboy-Sasayan from her dream would never have been so callous.

"What if I fail out of high school?" she hissed. Sasayan was not moved.

"You won't."

"What if I have to go to summer school!" Natsume pounded her hand against his desk. Sasayan turned wide, insolent eyes towards her.

"Well, then maybe you'll learn the material you were _supposed_ to have absorbed during the school year!"

Natsume gasped, theatrically, shocked by this betrayal. She rallied immediately.

"If I'm stuck in summer school, we can't hang out!"

"You have got to be kidding me," Sasayan growled. He outright glared at her. "Are you serious? You're trying to emotionally manipulate me into helping you with your stupid plan?"

"I was so looking forward to going to the beach!" Natsume lamented, "The beach! With Mitty and Haru and you too, I guess!"

"You're the worst," Sasayan hissed. He stood. Natsume stared up at him with huge, hopeful eyes.

"The _worst_."

"You're the best!" Natsume squeaked, and threw her arms around him. Briefly. He'd barely had time to even consider hugging her back before she had hastily backed away from him, red-faced and nervous.

"W-Well then," Natsume coughed, and then bolted with a careless, "To the teacher's lounge!" thrown over her shoulder, and a fervent hope that this would be enough for him to go on. Time was running out. The tests would soon be graded! Her plan must go into motion post haste.

Her mind and heart braced, Natsume prepared herself to steal her own test.


	6. Crime

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Crime  
**DISCLAIMER**: I feel like my failure to stop filling out disclaimers is some form of self-harassment.  
**NOTES**: So, I legit did not notice that this story was listed as "complete" until just now. Although I should have, since I kept on getting confused reviewers. Oh my god. I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened. It's not complete. I am just an idiot.  
**LENGTH**: 6/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, sixth: crime.

* * *

Natsume was an excellent criminal. Probably.

She peered around the corner to the other entrance of the teacher's lounge, where Sasayan was hesitating. She shot him the thumbs-up. He looked at her like he wanted to strangle her. Then the door slid back, and both of them jumped. Natsume jerked herself back out of sight, and inched the door open just as she heard Tanaka-sensei say, "Oh, Sasahara-san, something the matter?"

"Oh! Uh…" Sasayan broke off as the door Natsume was attempting to stealthily inch open squeaked. She froze. Sasayan coughed loudly. "Sorry! Sorry, I was, um, hoping I could talk to Yamada-sensei about the…test. That we just took."

Natsume held her breath, and squeezed through the gap in the door. Her hips caught, and the sliding panels again ground noisily together as she jerked her way through. She performed an extremely impressive somersault and rolled noiselessly behind a row of empty desks that had been pushed to the back of the room. Peeking up, she could see that only three teachers were sitting at their desks, all of them with their backs to her—save Sasayan and Tanaka-sensei, who were now entering the room.

Natsume flattened herself. She thought Sasayan's eyes might have jerked towards her for a second, but he was a baseball player. It was practically his _job_ to have great vision.

Now fully in ninja-mode, Natsume began to advance.

When she was three desks away, she heard Yamada-sensi say, "Sasahara-kun? I don't think I've seen you in here before."

"Oh! Er, yeah, well my—my mom told me I should start focusing more on my academics, instead of baseball." Sasayan laughed nervously. Natsume rolled her eyes. Neither Yamada-sensei or Tanaka-sensei seemed at all aware that—wait, Tanaka-sensei was—

With a lurch of horror, Natsume realized that the desk she was hiding under was the same one Tanaka-sensei was now approaching. Her heart hammering, she shoved herself as far back into the shadows as she dared and prayed—

"Ah!" Sasayan cried, and her stopped. So, too, did Tanaka's approaching feet, though he had already pulled out the chair to his desk. Almost shaking with fear, Natsume squirmed under the low gap between the back of his desk and the floor, and slid into safety.

"Sasahara-kun?!"

"S-Sorry, I thought I saw a spider," Sasayan laughed like a maniac. Natsume was tempted to join in. She was only two desks away.

"I see…" Yamada-sensei clearly didn't buy it. Natsume closed her eyes, certain that Sasayan was about to be evicted and that she would have to somehow escape on her own, when—

"W-Well, anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me about the math club. You're the advisor, right? I know it's late to join, but I'm pretty sure it's my strongest subject, so I was thinking that maybe I should—"

There were no words for how impressed Natsume was at that moment for the enormous sacrifice Sasayan had just made for her.

Yamada-sensei sounded almost beside himself with delight. "Why, Sasahara-kun, I'm very impressed with you! If you want to join, it's no problem! We can talk to Houji-sensei right now!"

And then, to Natsume's amazement, Yamada-sensei stood, and began leading Sasayan across the room towards one of the other teachers. Seizing her opportunity, Natsume shot forwards, grabbed the stack of ungraded tests, and rifled through them frantically. There was hers—right where it was supposed to be. He had watched her hand it in, and she had seen him mark it off. Yamada-sensei would have no other choice than to believe he'd lost it.

Natsume shoved the paper down the front of her shirt, and poked her head out. Every teacher in the room was now crowded around Sasayan, chattering excitedly about the prospect of having one of their school's star athletes on the nerdiest club on the roster. As if sensing her gaze, Sasayan looked around, grimaced infinitesimally, and then asked for the necessary paperwork to sign up.

As the teachers all hustled to find him all the required forms, Natsume quietly took her exit, debating whether or not even her own mother would have signed on to the math club for her. She was pretty sure the answer was no.


	7. Supernatural

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Supernatural  
**DISCLAIMER**: Your questions are hurtful.**NOTES**: My feet are cold. This is horrible. Why does this always happen! What's wrong with my circulation? I'm only twenty! Am I going to have a heart attack?  
**LENGTH**: 7/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, seventh: supernatural.

* * *

Her stolen exam crinkled underneath her shirt as Natsume loitered about in the hallway outside the teacher's lounge. She knew it would have been smarter to leave immediately, and start cramming the correct answers into her head as quickly as possible, but—

The door slid back, and Sasayan shuffled out, looking exhausted. Yamada-sensei gave him a final clap on the back, and said cheerfully, "You'll be a very welcome edition to the group! I expect to see you next Wednesday!"

"Thank you," Sasayan said miserably, and slid the door shut. Natsume stared at him, her eyes enormous, certain that he was about to yell at her.

"No more favors," Sasayan muttered. "For a _month_."

"No. I promise."

"And I want ice cream after school."

"Yes," Natsume agreed immediately. She was so sorry she probably would have bought him a dozen ice-creams, if he'd asked for it.

Looking pained, Sasayan turned to go, and Natsume ducked into the nearest bathroom to begin reviewing the answers for the exam she would inevitably have to retake. Hopefully.

The bathroom she had chosen was seldom used, being at the very end of the hall, and even before the bell had rung for class, the place was deserted. Natsume settled into the last stall, and started working through the problems.

It was very quiet, once everyone else had gone to their classrooms. One of the faucets was a little broken, and dripped fairly heavily. Something about that sort of bothered her.

Trigonometry was stupid, Natsume decided, and erased her work for what must have been the third time. What was the point in understanding something that was mostly theoretical anyway?

The faucet had stopped dripping.

Natsume tensed.

Why wasn't anyone using this bathroom, anyway? There were some classes nearby, after all, and it was a fairly large school. It was weird that—

Wait.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Natsume remembered. There'd been an incident, years before she had even been born, about bullying at this school. Some girl—Sayumi? Sayuki? had been pushed too hard and had accidentally struck her temple against one of the sinks.

The faucet was still quiet.

Had that girl _died_? Hadn't it been over a boy?

Natsume gripped her test a little more tightly as the silence continued, and then winced as the hard edge of one page cut through the skin of her index finger. She watched as a hot, bright bead of blood grew, and then fell to the floor. It landed just as the sink began to drip again.

Natsume put her hand over her mouth. She was being stupid. _Stupid_. The dripping was getting louder. She remembered now. The girl's name had been Sayumi and she'd had a reputation for using her looks to manipulate boys. A nasty girl. Probably a nasty ghost. But then, weren't _all_ ghosts angry, in some way?

But, of course, Natsume reasoned, all of that might have been completely untrue! Poor Sayumi had probably just been a victim of the same rumor that Natsume had suffered!

It was funny how the two of them came to be in exactly the same bathroom, though. It was almost like they were kindred spirits. It was almost like Sayumi was just a little too close—

Without warning, the toilet Natsume had been sitting on flushed.

Natsume shot to her feet, crammed her unfinished exam back down her shirt, and bolted out of the stall. The mirror by the sinks had fogged up. There were little smudges in the corners that looked suspiciously like handprints.

And there was red in the sink.

Natsume stared. Her mouth opened.

"You don't understand I know that he likes me and okay so maybe I used him a little bit but I didn't mean for him to_ sign up for the math club_ and oh my god things just got way out of hand and I really, _really_ didn't mean to have that happen but I swear I will study next time and also I will buy him ice cream and try to value his friendship properly and I would leave but there are hall monitors and I don't want to get in trouble but I DON'T WANT TO DIE. "

The final bell rang, every single toilet flushed ominously, the lights went out, and Natsume got the hell out of there.


	8. Drama

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Drama  
**DISCLAIMER**: I mean, honestly, this one might as well have been lifted from Gossip Girl. I think. I've actually never seen Gossip Girl. That's kind of amazing. I watch a lot of television. A LOT.  
**NOTES**: Oh shit, I'm the only one left in the café. Great. Now I'm THAT asshole.  
**LENGTH**: 8/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, eighth: drama.

* * *

In the time it took Natsume to stealth her way around all of the teachers for her afternoon classes and reclaim her things, Sasayan had already made his way to the baseball fields. Natsume sat up in the bleachers and watched his practice for a while, in part to put off working on her test, and also to help her forget about her possible near-death experience at the hands of a toilet ghost. As soon as saw the team huddle up though, her papers were in the bag and she had started making her way across the field.

"Sasayan!"

"Hey!" he waved, but didn't walk towards her. Instead, he went on talking to a girl standing beside him, who held a clipboard and a slightly forbidding expression. Natsume blinked, but didn't stop her approach. Some of his male teammates were staring at her, she knew, but she squinted slightly to blur them out, and did an otherwise successful job of ignoring them.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked, once she'd drawn close enough. Sasayan pulled his cap off, and used it to fan himself a little.

"Ah, yeah, let me wash up. I'll meet you by the bikes."

"Okay—"

"Excuse me," said the girl with the clipboard. "But this field is to be used _by_ the baseball team, _for_ the baseball team _only_." She glared at Natsume. Natsume blinked, and shrank back a little.

"O-oh, I'm sorry—"

"Wait, Matsumoto-san, it's okay," Sasayan started to say, but the girl whipped around on him, her face bright.

"It's my job as your team manager to make sure you guys have the best possible training conditions! And that means no distractions!" Matsumoto-san said, her voice shrill.

"Sasayan's so popular," muttered a boy behind Natsume. She frowned. Of _course_ Sasayan was popular! What did that have to do with anything?

"I get it, I'm sorry for the intrusion, I'll be leaving straight away," Natsume butted in hastily, and began to retreat. She hadn't made it three steps before one of Sasayan's teammates patted her on the shoulder.

"Good luck, Natsume-chan."

"Fighting!"

"YOU GUYS!" roared Matsumoto, and the lot of them bolted for the locker rooms, chuckling. Natsume stared, utterly confused.

She had almost made it off the field before Matsumoto shrieked, "Hey!" and sprinted after her. Natsume tried not to cower. Baseball terminology was awfully hard to keep up with.

"Natsume-san, right? What exactly is your relationship to Sasahara-san?" Matsumoto was breathing heavily. Natsume wasn't sure if it was because of her recent exercise, or because she was about to charge.

"W-We're friends?" Natsume stammered, backing towards the gate. Matsumoto's eyes narrowed.

"A likely story!"

"It's _true_!" Natsume wailed.

"_IS THAT SO_?" Matsumoto bellowed. Natsume was almost impressed. She certainly had all the spirit a baseball team's manager should posses.

"I—" Natsume stuttered, wondering now if today would be her last one on earth.

Matsumoto crossed her arms, and asked, "He confessed to you, didn't he? And you rejected him?"

Natsume thought her head was going to explode. She was literally physically incapable of bringning herself to answer. Matsumoto shoved an accusing finger in Natsume's face and cried, "You're _horrible_!"

"H-horrible?"

"A girl who rejects someone but then still uses them as her friend, and willfully engages in scenarios reminiscent of dates, seizes his attentions away from other girls who happen to be very close to him and very available, and wears fake eyelashes—!"

"My eyelashes aren't fake!" Natsume cried indignantly.

"IS THAT YOUR ONLY DEFENSE?" roared Matsumoto. Natsume cowered. Across the field, the first players were trickling out of the locker room, Sasayan among them. Matsumoto stole a hasty glance over her shoulder at them, and then lowered her voice. It somehow made her even more intimidating. "Listen, as Sasahara-kun's manager, I must ask you to stop!"

"Stop _what_?" Natsume cried, and at last had a flash of insight. "Don't _you_ just like Sasayan?"

Matsumoto rallied impressively. "So you caught me. Very well! But know this: I will crush all my rivals!"

"Wow, chief," a few players clapped as they walked past. Flames of youthful spirit seemed to be roaring around Matsumoto's straight, proud figure. Natsume's mouth hung open in awe.

"Good work everyone," Sasayan called with obvious distraction, and began dragging Natsume away.


	9. Spiritual

**ENTITLED**: Our Eyes Closed  
**FANDOM**: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
**GENRE**: Spiritual  
**DISCLAIMER**: I checked my bank account yesterday. Believe me when I tell you that I own nothing.  
**NOTES**: I'm one of those people who go on crash diets every other week because I eat like a pig when I'm not. You cannot imagine my euphoria when I had those mozzarella sticks 2 hours ago after a week of 600-calories a day. Oh god. I am so happy right now.  
**LENGTH**: 9/21  
**SUMMARY**: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, ninth: spiritual.

* * *

Something wasn't right.

Natsume wasn't sure what, yet, but she was _going_ to find out, damn it.

The first leaves had started falling. Natsume watched the wind tumble them along the road as she and Sasayan zoomed past them. She was good at riding on the back of his bike now. She'd learned how to lean into all the turns, keep even with his balance.

"Was Matsumoto being hard on you?" Sasayan called over his shoulder, as they blew past the convenience store. It would be getting cold soon, Natsume decided. Maybe icy. She'd have to remember to tell him to be careful taking the sharp corners.

"She seems like a nice girl," Natsume decided, then said, "She likes you, doesn't she?"

Of course Matsumoto liked Sasayan. She'd _said_ so, hadn't she? Natsume frowned, trying to process this.

"Oh, that," Sasayan said. He seemed awkward for a second, or at least she _thought_ he must have been, as she couldn't see his face. "I mean…I guess, yeah."

For a second Natsume felt hot indignation for her fellow woman. "Don't treat her feelings so lightly!"

"I'm not!" Sasayan protested, "She confessed! I said no! We're still friends! She makes me do laps if I'm late!"

"She _confessed_ to you?" Natsume was aghast. People weren't supposed to confess to Sasayan. He was too goofy looking. She wasn't even sure she remembered what his serious face looked like.

Sasayan took his hands off the bars, as they coasted down a low hill. He reached behind him and swatted at her knee. "You'll hurt my feelings."

"Does this happen a _lot_?" Natsume asked. Mentally, she kicked herself. Of _course_ it must happen! He was the most popular boy she knew, and the baseball team's ace player. And it wasn't like he was ugly, or anything.

"I'm not _you_," Sasayan laughed. Natsume stared at the back of his neck, and tried to picture him as an adult. It was incredibly difficult. Instead, all she could think about was a blushing, stuttering, faceless girl shoving a box of Valentine's chocolates in Sasayan's face.

"I can't believe girls like you!" Natsume blurted out.

"Thanks," Sasayan said, in a way that meant he clearly was not grateful. Natsume ignored him. She felt that she had, in some way, been slightly betrayed. Who _was_ this person sharing a bike with her, anyway?

Pressing questions, unresolved answers.


End file.
